


The Other Side of Paradise

by tawdryautomaton



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anyways, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Sadstuck, anywhere near dave, he is just not...., he just wants to be a shitty director, here, karkat is not dead, literally so short and almost no plot or background but i haven't written all summer ok, some post-game situation in which dave can't get away from Spectral Karkat, weird fucking thing idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-12-10 04:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11684517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawdryautomaton/pseuds/tawdryautomaton
Summary: Dave is plagued post-game (in some weird, loosely-structured au this is running in) by ghostly visions of a troll whose name he knows so well. But he wouldn't dare say it. He wouldn't think it. He could've lived the rest of his life without remembering. But this ghost seems less organic than most.tl;dr weird post-game older Dave smokes and stares at a specter._this is ridiculously artsy sry





	1. Life Itself

**Author's Note:**

> hey, thanks for clicking. the only thing I have to say is that this was mostly inspired by two Glass Animals songs, those being the Other Side of Paradise (roll credits) and Agnes. if you recognize those tunes yee great! but if you don't it's fine because they're not vital to the story. they set a good tone though.
> 
> enjoy

**I. Life Itself**

Smoke drifts out of your mouth, curling around the nothing in the air. You try to hide the jumping breath that peeks out from between your lips with every jostling movement of your frame, but you know he notices. He? It? It doesn't matter. You know him. You knew him. God forbid he reacts to your venom breaths. God forbid he pulls that stick from between your willowy fingers, shoves it down his throat so far he can't exist anymore, because it would be so much better than just letting him watch you.

Houston glares inward through the large living-room window at the two of you, glinting in the offensive setting sun. Even through directed shade, you know the brightness all too well. Your companion's back is turned to the heat, legs curled beneath him on the red loveseat directly adjacent to the recliner you're kicked back in. Although there's nothing 'kicked back' about your setup. You are as tense and stiff as the disintegrating item perched classically between your pointer finger and your middle.

He looks just like life; he's all discombobulated jungles and viscera irises and the damp heat of the penthouse air pins his unruly bangs to that flat, gray forehead. He stares with no eyes. Your mouth is pressed into a thin line as you bring the cigarette back to the intersection of your lips. Still no reaction. 

You will harder for him to go away. The vision that is him just flickers and transmogrifies into a more solid apparition, not quantifiable as such a specter as before. You scoff and sink further into your chair, ever so slightly, cursing the inevitability of fate that leaves you in God's mudspray. The energy for you to extravagantly extend a metaphor can't be mustered even remotely at this time.

Some word catches under your breath, and you can't put your finger on it, but it's solid enough that you know it was certainly there. It's some mangled rendition of  _ time,  _ and you take another puff of your cigarette mid-thought.

Your waistcoat atop a red button-up feels tight on your torso, but you couldn't be bothered to move to adjust it. Taking off your coat was enough. It hangs off the back of your chair. You're still fully and formally outfitted spare for that dress coat in question, slacks and oxford shoes appropriately decorating your bottom half. It's not enough of a train of thought to distract you from him. Your gaze hasn't moved.

It's a popular theory in your head that maybe, just maybe if you appear to suffer enough, if you stare it in the face for enough hours or days or weeks or even months, whatever cruel deity decided on this punishment would rescind its torment. Even for just a minute. Just releasing your dreams from this specter would be enough for you. Enough to touch a camera again. Enough to touch your phone. Enough to move. Enough to clean, or at least hire someone to clean, the high ceilings and tall walls, decorated with ironic posters that no longer stir something in you, statues and busts of bad movie stars, all collecting dust.

If fate is going to go to enough trouble to manufacture a figment accurate to the most intimate detail (his eyelashes with coarse, straight hairs and that thick fucking hair) then maybe ( _ god,  _ his fucking eyes the whites of his eyes they aren't even white why why why) it could at least be useful, could be tangible (his eyes aren't right surely they're not really there) enough to make you hurt more (his body is taut as usual and he still smells the same) by starting your emotional spiral upon feeling the callused hands that set you off lifetimes ago (he's wearing your clothes he's wearing your clothes he's wearing your fucking clothes).

He used to make you dinner after a long day. He used to curl around you and fist hands in your shirt. He used to hate you so hard and so wonderfully. You can't use the past tense with a solid mind when he's staring at you with no gaze. It's empty. Another puff of your cigarette, more frantic and your breath hitches harder, as if it's your first time smoking. As if you were back there. You could be 14 again. You could be in your dreams. He could move.

He is the assembly of everything that you miss, but put together by someone with no solid idea of  _ him.  _ Him, him, him. His name is ridiculous to you. Ridiculous that you could remember it and could fall apart in no time.

You could walk into the bathroom and splash cold faucet water on your pallid face, moisten the roots of your bleached-but-unkempt hair as you desperately run your damp fingers through those already greased strands. Stuck together in little clumps of coarseness. But he'd still stand behind you in your mirror, wearing your clothes. It's a lifetime ago. It's all lifetimes ago. So many elements from those lifetimes are so much more harrowing, so much darker and so much more painful. So why is it just him? Why don't you have the same dreams as your sister, all bright green and black and red, so red with blood. Yours are all red.

You stay put, snuff out your cigarette on the endtable perched next to your seat, and hold your gaze on the apparition. It flickers. Small victory for you. It doesn't move, its chest does not rise and fall like it should. He may look like life, because he is a perfect illusion, but he is not life.

"I've got you," it whispers. You don't jump. Your mouth doesn't even twitch into a different play of expression. You just stand up slowly from your chair on shaking legs. You don't know how long it's been since you've eaten. How have you gotten this far?

The gaze that isn't really there follows you grossly as you rise. He solidifies once again into full color and shape.

"I've got you." It repeats itself, but at the same volume despite new corporeality.

You settle for a ghost.


	2. How to be a Human Being

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more of this shit

**II. How to be a Human Being**

  
Suddenly you go through seven packs a day. You don't know how you're not dead. Your teeth hurt already, and you can't tell if it's from all the smoking or from the way your jaw clenches when he appears in your peripheral. You're forgetting how to be real. The burn helps. The smoke helps. The bite helps.

  
Moving towards work is hard. There's no set location you have to get to, but you know you don't get there. And you won't. You begin to cover up the mirrors in your house. You drape black cloth over them. It's a reminder that you're more real than he is. It's a reminder that reality is on a scale. And you don't know where you land on it anymore.

  
You never cry, because it does nothing. In practice, you're fine. Socially, you're fine. Your sister keeps in contact, digging into your psyche as she always does. You're sure she knows, but how much can she really do? There's a feeling deep down that at some point she'll show up at your door, peering over your shoulder through cat-eye sunnies to try and find out what you're carrying on your back. You'll say, "Rose, do you want a drink?" She'll say yes. She'll screen you silently, sitting on your loveseat with her legs crossed. She'll be framed by lilac sunset through the window. And it will be uncomfortably alike with his image in the same position.

  
He doesn't become any less noticeable, doesn't fade into the wallpaper, just festers in your t-shirts. You fear that the gradual integration of his pseudo-existence into your everyday life is another signifier of your ultimate loss of humanity. He could take everything from you just with a flick of the head that's a bit too quick for comfort, or just with another spoken word. He doesn't speak anymore, ever. That was rare to begin with. Rare, like your begging God to zap out of existence the world before that yielded such torture for you. It's the world that created him, that brought the two of you together in war. It's gone only in the physical sense. It still exists, etched into the folds of your brain. Yours, Rose's, Jade's, John's, Dirk's - everyone you know, sister and friends. Everyone you speak with anymore, all tucked way either in the northwest, New York, or a remote island in the Atlantic. For the latter, Jade's location, it varies too much for you to know.

  
You want to ask those who partook in the original experience if they're seeing the same thing. You want to wonder if some faded facade of love is haunting them as well, just an etching of trauma. On a December night, two days after your birthday, you asked Jade. Her lips went taut over the video feed, and you heard her clear her throat. "The Game still lives in our hearts. It was a war. That war's over now. Your dreams don't change the reality of that fact." It was an utterance hardly matching with her usual tone, leaving you feeling more uneasy even as you drifted into lighter discussion of Weekend at Bernie's.

  
He's the most consistent thing in your life, behind floor-to-ceiling curtains in the morning, lit by dull tv-light at midnight, radiating a chill in the kitchen at dusk. He looks at you as you pour another shot of whiskey, just like he does when you're smoking. The butts look like little dead teeth to you in the marble ashtray on your nightstand. They could be his. You picture him by your bed at three in the morning, hunched over with jaws cinched wide open, teeth falling off of his tongue and clinking into the tray. It's not out of malice. He still loves you, even in death. Or so you hope.

  
Why you're vying for the love of a ghost stands to no answer. His judgement is the thing that matters.


	3. Agnes

**III. Agnes**

A Sunday evening, after the first film shoot you've done in months, you drive home in your red Rolls-Royce. He's in the backseat, and you think he's purring. It could be the motor. Each glance at the rearview mirror brings his vacuous face. You pretend he's yours.

You don't look behind you as you enter your building, greet the doorman, and get on the elevator, all while swinging your key fob around your pointer finger. Your eye bags are hidden behind your Ray-Bans. The mirrored walls of the elevator bounce off of one another, giving the cruel vision tenfold its power. He doesn't flicker. There's a sixteenth of a smile on his face, between those apples of his cheeks, and you just stand as still as possible, unmoved. Sweat forms on your skin, and it's frigid. He's wearing a black t-shirt with a bloom of crimson over his supposed heart, black jeans rolled up at the ankles. They're torn. Your breath quickens. Too much has changed too quickly.

You are physically unable to turn your back to him. Suddenly he remains stationed directly in front of you, frozen in sweet venom. Your breath is burning a whole in your closed lips, your expression still stoic, and shooting pains haunt your gums. His face is so sweet. You can see the razortips of the trident poking through his chest now, adorned with his pretty red blood and bits of precious bone. That world is so far behind. How has it caught up so quickly? How is he so solid now? How have you fueled him this time around?

Something crackles and the elevator dings. The doors open to the empty, white hallway leading only to your penthouse door. Red tears run down his cheeks, following the trail set by the profile of his nose, trickling down to and over the prongs that stole him from you. Something goes limp in your mouth, and you feel like you've bitten rocks, reaching into your mouth with a trembling hand. Your teeth lay loose like pebbles, rolling over your tongue. Your eyes open painfully wide, glazed over in the play of your unfeeling coping mechanism of an expression as you pull out a fisted hand, opening it to see your molars, shiny and white. He's still crying, asking why you're here. You stay as still as possible, trying to pull your phone out to call Rose, but the crackling noise makes a deafening reappearance, tearing your attention away. 

Then it all stops. The air ceases to form around your muscles and your skin, choosing rather to snake against itself in a show of immobility and unreality. Your teeth revert back to staying in their soft pink beds and only there. He is nude, arms by his sides and palms facing you. 

He blinks with full eyes, trident sinking out of his chest and out of appearance, holes left in his tissue filling themselves with organic pulp. 

You choke on yourself again, body trembling with pure vibration. "K-" is all you can manage. You think you know what you need to do. "Karkat?" Your voice is a cat scratch, rough, painful.

His name loose in the stagnant air, he breathes outward, smiling warmly, worry on his features. "Hey." He takes one step towards you, tilting his head. "You've got me." And then he flickers away. 

You slither, weightless, into your home as the air resumes its passage around you. You pass out on the floor, cold, limp, empty.

The weeks following, a pattern forms; every night at midnight, you lose exactly one tooth.

It always grows back in.


End file.
